Three novellas tell of Elisa, as Alodia discovers her sister's true potential as the bearer, friend Mara tells how she came to be in the rebel camp where Elisa is taken by her kidnappers, and guard commander and true love, Hector, discovers a secret he must keep forever.

A joyful, intergenerational celebration of Black hair, family love, and cultural pride in the spirit of “Hair Love and Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut.” It's wash day, Tasha's least favorite day of the week! Wash day means stinging eyes, aching back, and water everywhere, even in Tasha's ears! But with big sis comforting her, Mama humming to the music, and Granny telling stories of wash days past, the weekly ritual soon becomes more than a weekend...

On Halo Nightly's eleventh birthday, her Aunt Pandora gives her a collection of jars filled with brightly colored candies. Soon she learns that the candies give her the incredible powers of nature. Halo uses the powers to combat Doozie Hiss, a rival student with super powered hair.

At Halo McNightly's school, the swimmers are disappearing from the boys' swim team. No one can figure it out, until Halo stars investigating. A deadly mermaid lives in a cave connected to the school swimming pool. Halo will have to use her special candy to turn into various underwater fauna, such as a hammerhead shark or an octopus, to defeat the hungry girl-fish!

Discusses the topic of girls and sports, focusing on all sides of the issues surrounding the topic.

During the biggest game of her life... a girl pitches to the world's best slugger. Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1931. Jackie Mitchell is a girl pitcher on a minor-league baseball team, the Chattanooga Lookouts. In her day, few women played sports. But her skill earned her a spot on a men's team. When the New York Yankees come to town, Jackie must face Babe Ruth at the plate. Can she strike out one of the greatest players in baseball?

Eleven-year-old Alanna and her older brother Hamel are orphans and doing their best to take care of each other until one day Alanna stumbles upon a cave full of dragon eggs. When the eggs hatch with no mother dragon in sight, Alanna decides to take care of the babies herself, even creating a clever costume so that the babies think she, too, is a dragon. With their large appetites and accidental fire burps, Alanna learns that dragon babies are hard...

In 1972, Flora Smallwood, nine, copes with her parents' separation with the help of her friends, Yury and Nessie, a new pet, and the familiar routines of life in Rosetown, Indiana.